Dwelling House Burglary Sentencing Guidelines In California

In Relying on People v. Warwick (1933) 135 Cal. App.. 476 [27 P.2d 396], defendant argued that he is guilty only of second degree burglary because the office was not a functional part of the residence. The defendant in Warwick broke into a tire store at a time when it was closed to the public and no one was in or around the store. (Id. at p. 477.) The court held that the tire store was not a "dwelling house" within the meaning of the burglary statute even though there was a hotel on an upper floor of the same building as the store. ( Id. at p. 478.) Not only was the entrance to the hotel on another street, but the court noted that there was no communication between the store and the hotel and there was no indication that the store and the hotel were under the same management. (Ibid.) In short, the store and the hotel were unrelated. (See ibid.) People v. Moreno (1984) 158 Cal. App. 3d 109 [204 Cal. Rptr. 17], held that a garage under the same roof as the living quarters, contiguous to and functionally interconnected with other parts of the home, was part of an inhabited dwelling, even though there was no door connecting the garage to the interior of the house. ( Id. at p. 112.) Most recently, the appellate court in In re Edwardo V. (1999) 70 Cal. App. 4th 591 [82 Cal. Rptr. 2d 765], determined the burglary of a garage that shared the same roof and one wall of a duplex was a first degree burglary, even though the residents of the duplex only had access to the garage through an outside door. ( Id. at p. 592.) In concluding that the garage was an integral part of the dwelling, the court emphasized the close proximity to the residence, the shared roof, the functional interconnectedness of the garage and the residence, as well as the reasonable expectations of the residents. ( Id. at pp. 594-595; see also People v. Fox (1997) 58 Cal. App. 4th 1041 [68 Cal. Rptr. 2d 424].)